


A Shift to Change Perspective

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars [107]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:33:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25890646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: A year later, Keller realizes he can have a life.
Series: Soft Wars [107]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775
Comments: 24
Kudos: 291





	A Shift to Change Perspective

“Damn you. Asshole.”

The words curl on sweet-spicy smoke and linger in the damp spaces under threatening clouds. The Marine pauses, assesses, strategizes. Slides the side door closed at his back. Keller sips poison and taints the air.

“You usually wait until I’ve done something before the curses start.”

It is neither excuse nor accusation. It leaves the space for Keller to explain as he wants, or not. Was there ever a man as careful as Nova’s command?

Careful, careful Keller’s Commander puts his back to the same wall. Careful, careful he doesn’t touch their shoulders together. Sometimes Keller still wants to hate him.

Marines call in the distance in cooperative joy. Saws hum like the cicadas that infect Dalos IV and half as lethal. A pneumatic rivet gun punctuates. The Marines exult and build themselves a place. They’ve built their homes, all of them, but still they get more. Land, by rights allotted to the Marine himself but given without thought to his men as a place to gather, learn and play and grow. They have the space and the hands and the will: the Marines build.

A year ago, the rivet gun would have been a cannon, the hums would have been bombers. The shouts would have been punctuated with silences that are so much worse. The Marines endured. Finally they can do more.

“Damn you right to hell.” He lights his fourth cigarette off the butt of his third, breathes til it glows amber-red. The stone bowl at his side is gorgeous: polished to a white glow, hip high on a stand carved just for it, filled with a sand fine like polytalc. Keller stabs the spent butt in deep. He revels in the way it rips the smooth surface.

When their positions are reversed, and in truth their positions often are, Keller will tempt with quips or jabs. Sharp at first, early on before he realized they’d never be returned, then later blunted with the barest tip of shame. Pulling words from Nova’s Marshall Commander on a good day is like prising stone from a barricade with only three fingers and a drinking straw. On a bad day, well. Keller would rather attempt venipuncture on that barricade using that self-same straw. So he’ll jest, he’ll joke, he’ll make himself unignorable until his Commander mines himself a word or two to let Keller even begin to guess what is wrong.

The Marine Commander on days like this, in exchange, will wait. Silent sentry over the low boil of Keller’s anger until it cools enough to skim words off the top.

Keller burns his cigarette down to the sensitive tips of his fingers. Lights his fifth. Befouls the increasingly less pristine sand.

Sixth. Tenth. Keller’s Commander waits.

There’s a table in the first room they’ve built and wired, a holonet terminal the guest of honor. The Nova Marine’s Marshall Commander should be back there now, presiding over the strew of ‘pads and panic of vode. A report isn’t an essay; a record isn’t a resume. None of them have ever once filled an application for anything. There’s someone from Guard coming by in the morning to give an experienced eye to the legalese in job contracts. Mixed bags of Jedi stop by regularly to advise on continued education.

In a tenday, the first four Marines are venturing out into a galaxy they aren’t intended to die for. The Commander should be there, soothing their terror just by being, walking them through choosing classes and building schedules. As unknowledgeable as they are but far better at hiding. Instead he’s here, waiting.

Keller makes it an even dozen. Marshall Commander Bacara will stand there and wait for him to finish the whole damn pack, and won’t think a damn thing of it.

Damn him.

He lights the thirteenth. “I have to quit smoking.”

Nothing. Not a word. Commander Bacara doesn’t have to validate that; Keller’s the damn medic. Keller’s the one who knows how to replace lung tissue with mechanized pulmonodes. Commander Bacara is the one who finds him a sith-damned ash tray and leaves the choices up to him.

Built it, probably, or had it built. He even had the beskar pair to make it karking nice. The type of thing you fill with water in a fancy garden for winged pests to splash about in, lined instead with sand. Keller knows the beach in front of his Commander's house is all rock on top: he’d have had to dig to even get to sand. Probably had to dig underwater, the silt is so fine. Dig and then dry it and then carry it here, for an ignoble end.

Keller lights another. Commander Bacara waits.

In a tenday, four Marines will get on a ship that’s nothing more than a vehicle, to a destination that’s a future. A year ago a ship was a countdown, and landing was death. Death and smoke.

It’s funny: no matter what side of the war, no matter what society, no matter what species, at some point every single culture figured out something to burn for five to eight minutes that cut through the hell that was the rest of the day.

“It wasn’t supposed to matter.” Smoke curls like a delicate accusation from his fingers. Finally, finally, a shoulder presses against his. He laughs, jagged and wounded. Like fingers left ragged after prising stones from a barricade. “It was a kark-you-kindly to the whole damn galaxy. It wasn’t going to matter, because _this_ was never going to be what killed me.”

If he was lucky, he’d thought, he’d never know _what_ killed him. When he went, he’d thought, he’d hoped, it’d be quick and easy.

“This will be difficult,” the Marine rumbles. Keller hisses through his teeth.

“I’m _aware_ , Commander I _am_ the medic. Do you even know what withdrawal looks like?”

“Yes.”

Just yes, nothing more. For a silent moment Keller doesn’t understand, and for a moment after that he is grateful. Every word he learns of their Commander’s life before he claimed his troops makes him angrier, directionlessly, fruitlessly, pointlessly. Hints make him rage; not once has knowing the details done anything to help.

Damn. He needs another.

He doesn’t fumble the cigarette. He loses it anyway.

Commander Bacara is an unmovable thing, when he sets his mind. No one who looks at him would doubt that. Few would guess that he’s also _fast_.

Keller is left gripping air for a long second. Commander Bacara doesn’t quite glare at the cigarette he’s stolen, but Keller has spent years knowing the slight tilts to him that mean everything from glee to distaste. This is both.

“We’ll get through it,” he promises. Affirms, swears, speaks into being. The Marine has spoken and it will be done. There isn’t another way.

‘We’, because it isn’t in The Marine to let a Marine fight alone.

“We’re Marines,” Keller quotes. They all do; it’s as much a mantra as Remembrance. “We endure.”

“We endure,” Bacara agrees. Steals the rest of the pack off him, as easy as if Keller had handed it. Trades it for a holopad and Keller doesn’t have to ask which.

Yavin wants to expand its trauma center. Wants to create programs for army medics to become doctors. Wants Keller.

Keller’s never written a Force-damn resume in his life. Doesn’t know what to say over a holocall interview. He could never have imagined he’d live long enough to need that.

When he saw his Commander off to confront the Upstart On Coruscant, he’d never have imagined he’d return with future for every one of them. Even the ones like Keller, far too old to still believe in the shinies’ nova-eyed hope.

He takes the padd. The words glare intimidating. Keller almost, almost would rather be shot at. Almost. Keller, a doctor. In which sith-damn hell of a fever dream could he have imagined that?

“Damn you,” he says, laughs. The corners of his Commander’s mouth twitch up.

“It usually takes longer than that for the insults to start.”

“I’ll likely be saying much worse before we’re through.” There’s a warning in the jest. Keller has smoked the entirety of the war. He isn’t sure who he is without a cigarette. He’ll find out, but nothing has ever once come easy to Marines.

Someone distant shouts; someone else starts the roar of a wood fire and paints the evening homely with roast. A shoulder presses against his.

Commander Bacara’s words are slow and thick, and his mind has never been anything of the sort. “I won’t hold most of them against you.” A promise, returned.

He would never do anything less. Keller wouldn’t have thought to doubt.

“Now get rid of the ashtray. You asshole.”

**Author's Note:**

> "Don't wanna call you in the nighttime  
> Don't wanna give you all my pieces  
> Don't wanna hand you all my trouble  
> Don't wanna give you all my demons  
> You'll have to watch me struggle  
> From several rooms away  
> But tonight I'll need you to stay"  
> \- The Run And Go, Twenty One Pilots


End file.
